What Graphics Software Do You Use- and Would You Recommend It To Others?

[Pat]

I use photofilter as my primary editing tool well err umm as i guess you could call it    I do have the GIMP as well but im slowly learning it...

[El Burro]

Photoshop, no question.

I've tried others like GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, Open Canvas and Corel Painter but they just don't compare, although, Corel Painter is more of an advanced virtual Art set for Concept Artists and such rather than a Photomanipulation tool. Open Canvas is pretty close to Photoshop though...

[vab423]

Not sure if you're still looking. I use Photoshop Elements 3. I have Elements 6 which I've installed at work but not at home yet, and not sure if I will because 6 looks rather bloated and more dumbed down.  Previously I was using Photoshop 6.

Elements 3 is pretty great. It really does a lot of what PS does and is good for the "I'm not an amateur but I'm never going to be a professional" user for a fraction of the cost. I think I've seen Elements 6 for $83'ish online and $89 at Best Buy. I checked out this fabulous book from the library called The Photoshop Elements 3 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby. It has a ton of useful information, techniques and tips and workarounds for many of the Photoshop features left out of Elements. 

The only thing that drives me crazy about the program is the Organizer, which I never use, although Scott Kelby's book includes a chapter on getting the most out of it.

Anyway I'm a couple months late with my opinion, but just in case you haven't purchased anything yet, thought I'd chime in.

[j-dub]

paint.net 100% free, no 30 day limit stuff, looks alot like Photoshop, worx and does effects just like Photoshop. Really really, really replicates it in my opinion, except easy to use tools, I ended up self learning the program. Also gets updated every once and a while for new features, everytime Adobe updates, or comes up with new stuff, usually you have to cough up more.

[ShadeSlayer]

I'm currently running Photoshop CS4. Great piece of software.

Just recently upgraded from CS2.

[null45]

I use either Paint.NET and/or The Gimp.

Both of which can load / save Fsh files directly 

[shoreman905]

I use several programs to achieve the results I am looking for. I began my journey with Corel 1.2, using X4 now. Corel Photopaint has superior masking and clone tool capabilities. Corel Draw beats Illustrator in every way for artistic vector graphics. I added Photoshop elements 3 at first now up to 7, because of pressure from clients who had heard of Photoshop and decided that was the inexpensive way to decide and learn if photoshop was the right tool. And it is in certain areas. I now have CS4 Production Premium (I produce video as well as graphics) but jump between Corel products and Adobe products (I still keep elements available for the skin color correction tool) within each contract requirement. Heck if something new came down the pike, I would check it out as well. I am always looking for the best tool for the job.

[City]

My personal favorite graphics editing software would for sure have to be Paint. Net. Lots of you may not have heard of it, but it is a pretty good image editing program. It's free and open-source, which I like. There are so many additional things on it instead of plain ol' MS paint. For those who are on a budget and need some good picture editing software, getpaint.net!   

[vershner]

Primarily I use Photoshop, but for such a large and expensive program, there's a surprising amount of things it just doesn't do very well.  Drawing small detailed images, such as textures for SC4, can be quite frustrating at times. The following points apply to CS2. I don't know if later versions are any different.
- Photoshop's paths and curves are extremely slow and cumbersome to use. Almost every other drawing package uses the simple line-with-anchors method, but Photoshop does it completely differently. You draw a line, not to the point where you want to finish, but in the direction you want to start. Then you have to try and bend the line to where you want it to go.
- It doesn't allow you to attach a copied brush to your cursor. You can achieve the same thing with copy and paste, but having the brush actually on your cursor is so much quicker.
- It doesn't give you any preview when you're using the predefined brushes.
- It doesn't do dotted lines.
- The healing tool, while usually very useful, often fails to work properly and lightens or darkens the area being healed.
- It can bend and warp part of an image, but it doesn't give you a preview when doing that, so the feature is fairly useless for detailed work. (I think this is better in CS3 though)

So to complement Photoshop I use Personal Paint, which is an ancient Amiga program dating from 1997. Some of you may remember Deluxe Paint and it's exactly the same except it supports PNG, GIF, JPG, and pretty much any other file format thanks to the magic of the Amiga datatypes system.


To give Photoshop its due, there are a number of things it does very well. The layer support is excellent, selection options are much better then other packages I've used, the range of drawing styles (soft light, colour burn, etc) is excellent, the text handling is very good.

[MandelSoft]

I use MS Paint and Photoshop. I'm combining the pro's of the two to make my textures 

[joelyboy911]

I use Paint.Net. Its easy and it has all the features I have ever needed so far for game and BAT texturing. I have tried photoshop, but I eventually decided that it would be too hard to learn quickly, so I stuck with Paint.Net

[pilotdaryl]

GIMP 2.6.4 - I've been using GIMP for about 2-3 years now, I'm used to it and all the features and with it I can create very nice aircraft liveries!

I use either Paint.NET and/or The Gimp.
Both of which can load / save Fsh files directly

I didn't know that!

[BigSlark]

I use Photoshop CS4 and absolutely love its features and relative ease of use over CS2/3.

Cheers,
Kevin

[Nardo69]

I use mainly Irfanview and Paintshop Pro 5.01 (yup, that old).

For making snapshots, Batch conerting resizing etc. Irfanview is my first choice, while for cutting images, making Text etc on them or for occasionally texture work I use PaintShop.

[Tarkus]

I use either Paint.NET and/or The Gimp.

Both of which can load / save Fsh files directly 

I just noticed this now, and am very intrigued--how are you doing it?

Thanks,
Alex

[sithlrd98]

Photoshop CS2 is my primary program.

I just noticed this now, and am very intrigued--how are you doing it?
Thanks,
Alex

GIMP 2.6.4 - I've been using GIMP for about 2-3 years now, I'm used to it and all the features and with it I can create very nice aircraft liveries!
I didn't know that!

Yeah,I'm interested in how that is also...using(loose term) 2.6.6 and did not see anywhere .fsh. So is there a plugin?

Jayson

[null45]

I wrote a File Type plug-in for Paint.NET, that plug-in is at http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=8759.0

And I also wrote a File Type plug-in for The Gimp, although the plug-in for the Gimp relies on over a dozen other libraries.
I use Gimp 2.6.5.

Both of which use DarkMatter's FshLib to load / save FSH files.

[dragonshardz]

I used to use Irfanview and still do for some things, but now I use the GIMP.

Speaking of which, null45, you really should release those filetype plugins. They would be INFINITELY useful.

EDIT: NVM, I found his release of these things for the GIMP, so I'm happy.

[Lowkee33]

SimCity is the only reason I use image editing software.  I have been using GIMP for screenshots and  texture work.  The  downside is that it can not handle 16bit PNGs, which is what I want for making regions (although perhaps a beta version does, they are working on 1.8 right now).  My photoshop trial is counting down.

So far on this page I have seen Paint.net and Inkscape.  The GIMP FAQ refers me to Krita as a way to edit 16 bit pngs.  I don't know anything about this stuff.  Which of these open source programs can do 16 bit?  One thing I like about GIMP is that a pasted layer can be dragged around (My region is an island chain, so I have been cut/pasting islands to better fit a config).  I have been having a hard time getting precision pastes with photoshop.

Thanks

[Shark7]

I actually use three, depending on what I am doing.

For general stuff, Jasc PSP works well enough.  Though I have used Gimp and Paint.net for resizing as the Jasc resizing has a bad habit of distorting the image.

If you are just doing quick photo editing, Jasc PSP works fine as an alternative to Photoshop.